The New York Times further fans the flames of the emerging uneasiness between Microsoft and its hardware partners. As the paper reports, Microsoft decided it needed to get into the hardware game (with Surface) after the utter failure of HP's Slate 500 Windows 7 tablet. "Microsoft worked with other hardware partners to devise products that would be competitive with the iPad, but it ran into disagreements over designs and prices. 'Faith had been lost' at Microsoft in its hardware partners, including by Steven Sinofsky, the powerful president of Microsoft's Windows division, according to [a] former Microsoft executive." The biggest news is not Surface itself. It's the changing industry it represents. Microsoft failed to deliver capable smartphone/tablet software, which pissed off OEMs, who, in turn, turned to Android (and webOS for HP) - which in turn pissed off Microsoft, leading to Surface. Had Microsoft gotten its act together sooner, we'd have had far better OEM products.

I'd say that it was mainly Microsoft who failed. From a consumer view, what innovation have we seen from Microsoft the past 15 years? The OS is basically the same (NT=XP=Vista=Win7). Yes, some eyecandy was added (Aero, gradients, drop shadows).

...and yet another person who completely disregards the fact that virtually everything - frameworks, stacks, etc. - has been rewritten or massively overhauled between XP and 7, a process that's nearing completion with Windows 8.

Come on guys, I expect comments like this on Engadget, but not here. You guys know better than this.

Come on guys, I expect comments like this on Engadget, but not here. You guys know better than this.

Wasn't ~"Operating Systems News" more prominent in the past layout? Perhaps now, with just OSNews (is Exploring the Future of Computing), we largely have a crowd who gathered here thinking it's about open source ...so of course anything-Microsoft needs to be suppressed or ridiculed.

On the other hand, Microsoft did fail to offer a compelling touch-based UI for tablets, and x86 tablets were a stupid idea until the very latest 2012 intel procs. Not that you had the choice until Win8, as an ARM version of "Wintel" was unimaginable.

So Microsoft "losing faith" in its OEM is laughable: by their inability (until Metro) to create a good interface and to create an ARM version, they are the main culprits of the sorry state of Windows slates.

And now that x86 procs are, at last, good for the job, Microsoft uses its ginormous reserves of cash to jump over its OEM before they have the time to get on.

So once again, MS screws its "partners". Good luck trying to spin it otherwise.